Since the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process began in 2007 at the Human Rights Council at the United Nations it has both forced governments to defend their polices as well as actually causing them to change them.

Issues with relying on the US State Department for a accurate take on LGBT life in particular countries have been highlighted in the reporting of Daniel Berhane, the self described 'leading blog in Ethiopia.

He has found a leaked Cable (here's the cable) from US Embassy Addis Ababa, dated Dec. 30,2009. It claims that:

The London gay wedding of Kenyan men Charles Ngengi and Daniel Chege Gichia sent shock waves throughout Kenya. There was outright and widespread condemnation of their marriage in Kenyan media through October 2009. And the pair were described as "the accidental gay rights trailblazers."

The Belarussian gay website gayby reports that Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenkо - who has been described as "Europe's last dictator" - was unable to pronounce the word homosexuality on the first try at a 7 October press conference with Russian journalists.

Fed up with both day after day of nasty newspaper headlines and one civil society leader after another abandoning them, last Friday Accra's gay community came out, one-by-one, at a major "straight" forum.

Ghanian blogger Graham Knight described the collective coming out as "remarkable."

Uganda's only LGBT bar, Sappho Islands, closed Sunday night with the landlady saying, according to activist Frank Mugisha (who has just won another human rights award) that the "bar brings people who look strange".

Activist Kasha Jacqueline said on Facebook that she was "heartbroken".